Unmanned vehicles such as unmanned aerial vehicles can be used for performing surveillance, reconnaissance, and exploration tasks in a wide variety of environments for military and civilian applications. An unmanned aerial vehicle may be manually controlled by a remote user, or may operate in a semi-autonomous or fully autonomous manner. Various control schemes can be implemented to enable operation of an unmanned aerial vehicle within an environment with varying degrees of autonomy.
However, existing control schemes for unmanned aerial vehicles may not be optimal in some instances. For example, an unmanned aerial vehicle may operate in environments in which obstacles are present (e.g., buildings, trees, human beings, other aerial objects). Existing control schemes may rely upon the user's own judgment to determine safe operating parameters for the unmanned aerial vehicle in order to minimize the probability of collisions with obstacles. This may be challenging for inexperienced users or in situations where the user cannot easily see the environment surrounding the unmanned aerial vehicle (e.g., when the unmanned aerial vehicle is relatively far from the user).